I have been “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,” and been “unaccountably in error,”
and am sorry if you have been offended

Thursday, January 03, 2008

BBC Hearts Deepak Chopra? Me Salve Deus!

Faithful readers have been aware of my disenchantment with BBC as a credible news outlet. On 31 December, in a fawning, one-hour interview of Deepak Chopra, a BBC “Sorry I Don’t Do Hard Talk” host lobbed one softball question after another without even any follow-up questions. I looked through the BCC website, but could not find a trace. I hope that it was a bad dream.

In case you don’t know who Mr. Chopra is, he is a medical doctor by training who makes a lot of money by connecting sound medical facts to gooey New Age blather. Think, Hiroyuki Ehara with an M.D. …if I only knew how they did it…

Since the landmark disarmament deal was agreed in February, North Korea has closed its main reactor at Yongbyon. Steps are currently underway to permanently disable it.

But the second stage of the process - a written declaration providing a complete account of all Pyongyang's nuclear activities - has proved more problematic.

In fact, this is not as ridiculous as it seems. U.S. authorities are letting it leak that North Korea missing the Yongbyon deadline (which the BCC unknowingly overlooks altogether) is a technical glitch, and will be rectified in a few months. We’ll see.

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About Me

After graduation, Jun Okumura promptly entered what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and stayed in in its ecosystem most of his “adult” life. Along the way, he had pleasant stops in an assortment of Japanese quangos (Japangos?), overseas assignments and government agencies. After thirty years, though, it dawned on him that he had no aptitude whatsoever for administration and/or management. Armed with this epiphany, he went to the authorities and arranged an amicable separation; to come out, as it were. He is completely on his own IYKWIAS, but he and the METI folks remain “good friends.” He currently holds the titles of “visiting researcher” at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (no, that MIGA) and counselor at a risk analysis firm that dares not speak its name. This gives him plenty of time to blog or make money on his own. His bank account says that he does too much of the first, and insists that he do more of what he calls “intellectual odd jobs”. He wants to be paid to write fulltime, or better, talk—where the easy money is—but that distinction has largely escaped him. He really should not be referring to himself in the third person; he is not that famous.